BHARATI KRISHNA TIRTHA

Bharati Krishna Tirtha (also sometimes Bharati Krisna Tirtha) was the Sankaracharya (Pontiff) of the Govardhan Math, Puri, from 1925 to 1960 AD. He is most noted for, first, as being the inventor of and author of Vedic Mathematics, a highly controversial set of strategies for mental calculation. Secondly, that he revealed the archives of the Puri Jagannath Temple contain within their ancient records a set of texts purporting Jesus of Nazareth visited India during his so-called "lost years of the Bible."

Born in March 1884, his parents named him as Venkatraman. During his school days Sri Venkatraman was extraordinarily bright young man, masterfully excelling over his peers in almost all academic areas. At the early age of fifteen he was awarded the title Saraswathi by Madras Sanskrit Association in 1899 because of his proficiency in Sanskrit. In 1902 he won the highest place in the graduation B.A. examination.

At the age of twenty Sri Venkatraman Saraswati passed the Masters Degree examination in six subjects: Sanskrit, English, History, Philosophy, Mathematics and Science from the Bombay Centre of the American College of Science, Rochester, New York --- simultaneously scoring the highest honors in all, and considered by most as an all-time world record at the time.

In 1908, mostly stemming from a deep inclination toward things spritual since childhood, he proceeded to Sringeri Math in Mysore to lay himself at the feet of the renowned late Jagadguru Shankaracharya Maharaj Shri Satchidananda Shivabhinava Nrisimha Bharati Swami. No sooner had Bharati Krisna Tirtha done so than he was offered the post of the first Principal of the newly started National College at Rajmahendri and, under a pressure from a number of nationalist leaders, began the post. However, after three years, in 1911, he went back to Shri Satchidananda Shivabhainava Nrisimha Bharati Swami at Sringeri.

Starting at age 27, for eight years, from the year 1911 through to 1919, as a pure ascetic, Bharati Krishna Tirtha studied advanced Vedanta philosophy and practice of the Brahma-sadhana at the feet of Shri Nrisimha Bharati Swami. During those years of study he would leave the Swami going into the nearby forests on long solo retreats leading a purely saintly life living on roots and fruits in continuous Sadhana, devoting himself to the study of Vedanta. One day in doing so he attained spiritual self-realization.[1] In 1919 he was initiated into the holy order of Sannyasa at Varanasi by H. H. Jagadguru Shankaracharya Shri Trivikrama Tirthaji Maharaja of Sharadapeetha and was given the new name, Swami Bharati Krishna Tirtha. Three years later, in 1921, he was installed on the pontifical throne of Sharda Peetha Shankaracharya, and in 1925 he shifted to Puri when he was installed as Jagadguru Shankaracharya of the Govardhan Math, while Shri Swarupanandaji was installed on the Shardapeetha Gadi. In 1953, he founded an institution named Shri Vishwa Punarnirmana Sangha (World Reconstruction Association) in Nagpur, with Shri Chimanlal Trivedi as the General Secretary and the Administrative Board consisted of his disciples, devotees and admirers.

It was during his deep meditation retreats between the years 1911 and 1919 in the Shringeri forests that the super-normal perceptual state of Siddhis manifested and he became aware of the sutras he later associated with Vedic Mathematics. Apprently over that eight year period he worked on the sutras, writing all sixteen volumes by hand into school notebooks, treating each together as one independent volume.

Sometime during the period that he reached age 50 or so, for undisclosed reasons, Bharati Krisna Tirtha borrowed a rather large sum of money from Shri Manilal Desai, a money-lender of Dakor and devotee. As a security against the borrowed amount Bharati Krisna Tirtha pledged his manuscript notebooks which he packed away safely in a few tin trunk boxes and left in the care of Shri Manilal Desai. He was not able to repay the amount owed until 1955 or so. By then the boxes had fallen under the charge of Shri Manilal Desai's son Shri Laxminarayan. Once in his possession the son had them transported from Dakor to his residence at Asarva in Ahmedabad.

Vijaya M. Sane, said to be a professor with Kalabhavan Polytechnic in Vadodara, had a great interest in tracing down the location of the boxes containing the hand written manuscripts, using his contacts with higher-ups in the Gujarat Government and Gujarat Police Department, finally located the residence of Shri Laxminarayan in Ahmedabad and got the boxes confiscated and searched. The boxes were found to contain nothing but useless scraps, old shoes, and other trash. After that Professor Sane contacted Shri Laxminarayan personally. Shri Laxminarayan said that a German scholar offered him a large amount of money for the sixteen volume VM manuscript material and that he sold the contents of the boxes to the German scholar, after which he stuffed the boxes with rubbish. Professor Sane tried his utmost to trace the whereabouts and identity of the German scholar, with the help of Honorable Shri Hitendrabhai Desai, Chief Minister of Gujarat at that time, but his efforts have never met with any degree of success.

After the confirmation that all the volumes were lost, most likely sometime in 1956, Bharati Krisna Tirtha was requested by his ardent devotees to make them available again by rewriting them. On their request, in 1957, in his old age, failing health and weak eyesight, he recreated the volumes. In 1958 the type-script of the VM was left in U.S. for publication. During that same year he traveled the country for several months visiting luminaries and lecturing to a wide spectrum across America.

One of the people Sri Bharati met with on his tour of the U.S. was Sri Daya Mata, the president of Paramahansa Yogananda's Self-Realization Fellowship. In turn, in 1959, she traveled to India to meet and talk with people of note related to the Fellowship as well as visit some of the hallowed and sacred places from which the Fellowship sprang. During her travels she made it a point to repay Sri Bharati 's visit from the year before by stopping in Puri to see him. As reported in the article titled "Remembering Paramahansa Yogananda," appearing in Self-Realization Magazine, (Winter, 1992, p.16) the following transpired:

"In 1959 I discussed this (Jesus being in India during his so-called 'missing years' of the Bible) with one of India's great spiritual leaders, His Holiness Sri Bharati Krishna Tirtha, the Shankaracharya of Puri. I told him that Guruji (Paramahansa Yogananda) had often said to us that Christ spent some of his life in India, in association with her (i.e., India's) illumined sages."

His Holiness replied:

"That is true. I have studied ancient records in the Puri Jagannath Temple archives confirming these facts. He was known as 'Isha,' and during part of his time in India he stayed in the Jagannath Temple. When he returned to his part of the world, he expounded the teachings that are known today as Christianity."

Somewhere in my writings I state it is my belief that the highly spiritual person who influenced my life the most, the person I call my Mentor, the same person the famed British playwright and author William Somerset Maugham used as the role model for the main character in his novel The Razor's Edge, and who I met in real life during my high school years, after meeting a Benedictine monk named Father Ensheim during his travels in Europe following WWI, taking the monk's advice, went to India-Tibet in search of the Hemis Manuscripts, said to be a set of scrolls or books stating Jesus of Nazareth visited India during his so-called "missing years" in the bible.

If my mentor ever saw the manuscripts or if the manuscripts even or ever existed is not known. However, it seems to me, if you track the various aspects of my mentor's background, he had a massive change regarding his approach to things spiritual and religious after going to Hemis, especially so how he viewed things in a western sense. Between the time he got off the boat in Bombay and the time he arrived at the temple in Madura and met Swami Ramdas a second time some two to three years later, enough of a change had occurred that when he went to Tiruvannamalai, South India to study in the ashram under the venerated Indian holy man the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, he was Awakened to the Absolute --- that is Enlightened in the same manner as the ancient classical masters.

Many years later, in the period during or after 1959, but before I was drafted a couple of years later, in conversation following a meeting with Sri Daya Mata, my mentor told me Sri Daya had shared information with him regarding the Jagannath Temple in Puri and the ancient records that Sri Bharati had studied regarding Jesus being in India. My mentor told me had he known that beforehand, he may have never gone to the Hemis monastery but gone to Puri instead. Besides he said, the Jagannath Temple is said to have secreted away in one or all of the four idols within the temple something of almost equal interest as the records, a something known as Brahma Padartha, life substance or life material --- the substance or material in this case being a so called "tooth relic" of the Buddha. Re the following from the source so cited:

"Brahma Padarthas are core materials in the four wooden deities of Sri Jagannath temple. These core materials are transferred from the old idols to the new in a metaphor of immortality of soul and its reincarnations.

"The four 'badagrahis' entitled to perform the transfer of Brahma Padartha get the chance to see and touch these secret core material kept within the four idols. Bound by a vow, they never disclose the identity of Brahma Padartha to anyone. Till date, generations of these daitapati servitors have steadfastly kept the identity of Brahma Padartha a closely guarded secret."

Knowing the history of such things through my mentor as well as later studying the same subject matter extensively stemming from a curiosity-based need to know about such things, since I was within quasi-striking distance to Puri from Calcutta and with not much to do except hang out and play cards with a bunch of doofuses, I decided to visit the Jagannath Temple, and if I could, learn for myself, answers to some of the mysteries I had heard so much about.

The Jagannath Temple lets Hindus and Buddhist into the interior grounds and temple, but not Christians and Muslims. Falling into a "you look more like Christian camp" I was immediately questioned and held in abeyance. It was only after I was able to forge past lower level guardians that things changed. The treatment afforded me upon seeing my necklace completely negated any questioning, actually escalating me into a more deeply accepted realm. See:

However, unfettered access or not, like the generations upon generations of daitapati servitors who have steadfastly kept the identity of Brahma Padartha a closely guarded secret, I too am relegated to such status, thus no more can be said.[3]

Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zen master's. Where we differ is that we place a fog, a particular kind of conceptual overlay onto that experience and then make an emotional investment in that overlay, taking it to be "real" in and of itself.

As time went on the self-realized saint of Arunachala became known as the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. In 1919 Bharati Krishna Tirtha, a masterful and avid scholar of The Texts, was initiated into the holy order of Sannyasa. Ramana, considered one of India's greatest saints and a holy man practically without equal, was himself NOT formally initiated into Sannyasa. He was Awakened to the Absolute at age 17 basically out of nowhere with little or no formal religious background, and definitely without a personal guru. Underlining that status, it should be noted, when Bharati Krishna Tirtha visited the Ashram of Sri Ramana he sat on the floor like everyone else, even though Ramana had arranged for a raised seat for him to sit.

My first two years of high school I had a job running errands a couple of days a week for a badly burned, heavily scared, barely able to move ex-merchant marine. During World War II the merchant ship he was serving on was forming up into a convoy and was positioned amongst the other ships in the rear corner on the starboard side that he called "coffin corner," said by experienced hands to be the most easy picking location for submarines in a convoy. Just as the convoy got underway members of a U-boat wolfpack began striking at the edges of the convoy and my friend's ship torpedoed. In order to save himself he had no choice but to jump overboard, landing in an area with oil burning along the surface of the water, the fire scorching his skin as he plunged through and returned for air.

He was found in the north Atlantic strapped by heavy ropes to a large piece of debris months later hundreds of miles from the attack, and although he himself said he did not recall ever being on a submarine, German or otherwise, it could possibly be the case that he was, after all he was severely burned. It could be he was attended to on a submarine --- although it must be said, subs had limited facilities, and will, to do so for any extended period of time. He, however, held to the belief that other things were in the works.

He spent months in recovery and rehabilitation. One day in the hospital while being given a sponge bath he was looking in a hand mirror at his burn marks when he noticed he had the necklace around his neck. He never had a gold necklace in his life. When he asked the nurse where it came from she said as far as she knew he came in with it as it was found among the few personal effects he had with him. She said typically they would not put any jewelry on a patient but some of the staff thought that since he was so scarred by the burns that he might like a little beauty in his life so someone put it around his neck. He told me he had no clue where it came from or how it came into his possession, but for sure he didn't have it on before he was torpedoed. He said everybody always admired it and it appeared to be very ancient.

Ten years following that torpedo strike, between my sophomore and junior years in high school, my merchant marine friend, due to long term complications from injuries incurred during the attack, his body basically just shut down and he died. At his memorial service I was told by family members, following a death bed request on his part, that in an effort to fully rejoin his fellow seamen he wanted to be cremated and his ashes along with his necklace tossed at sea near where his ship was torpedoed. Unknown to anybody, especially so family members, years before, he promised to see to it, no matter what the circumstances, I would receive the necklace upon his death. As far as I know, the necklace along with his ashes, following what the family members said was his request, had been complied with and returned to the sea.

Another ten years later, after having been drafted, between assignments, found me in a red-darkened strobe light lit bar sitting around with a handful of para-military types and close Army buddies in the Cholon district of Saigon gulping down a large amount of a seemingly never ending supply of of alcoholic beverages. From out of the smoky milieu of mostly horny and inebriated GIs, unsolicited, a tea girl attempted to sit on my lap and tried to put something around my neck. Pushing back I could see she held what appeared to be a gold necklace stretched between her hands. Hanging midway along the necklace was a small Chinese character. Basically grabbing the necklace from her hands I asked where it came from and how she got it. She turned pointing toward a group of barely discernible figures sitting and drinking toward the back of the barroom in the shadows along the darkened wall, telling me that one of the men, a burnt man, had paid her to put it on me. When I asked what she meant by a burnt man, using her hands in a swirling motion in front of her face combined with a snearing facial expression to indicate scars while gasping for air as if the man had a tough time breathing, said in broken English, "burnt man, burnt man." In just the few seconds it took me to work my way through the crowd to the back wall pulling the tea girl with me the burnt man, if there ever was a burnt man, was gone. Nor could anybody at any of the tables remember seeing or talking to a heavily scarred man, burnt or otherwise, sitting at any of the tables --- although some of the GIs were fully able to recall the girl.

One morning in the fields outside the monastery walls I was taking care of business when I was approached by three heavily armed military irregulars. In what could be called nothing less than a blatant out-and-out forced kidnapping, having little or no option, against my will and with no real chance of making it back inside the monastery walls without being followed in by men with guns, I returned with them to Chiang Mai. The following will pretty much clarify what it was about the necklace that makes it so important in the overall scheme of things:

"On the return trip we stopped for a couple of nights at a military encampment or compound of Khun Sa. At first I thought we had been captured and taken to the camp, which for all practical purposes, we were. However, once we were inside the perimeter of the compound it was quite obvious the Australians and Khun Sa knew each other. He wanted to see the man under the protection of the Lord Buddha. After a quick introduction I was told I was under HIS protection now. Everybody laughed. Then Khun Sa motioned me closer, almost immediately dropping his eye contact from my eyes to that of the the small gold Chinese character dangling around my neck. Reaching forward he softly took the tiny medallion between his thumb and index finger, looking at it very carefully and rubbing it for what seemed the longest time. The background noise and the overall din of the soldiers in the camp became quiet and the air stilled. As a man who could have and take anything he wanted I thought he was going to yank the chain from my neck. Instead he allowed it to gently fall against my skin and stepped back and the sound returned to normal. Basically a tribal person seeped in superstition, Khun Sa, and no doubt along with a good part of his camp as well, knew that for the necklace to have the intended power vested in it, it had to either be given freely and without malice or found after having genuinely been lost. Otherwise, if taken or stolen, its intent would be reversed and what would befall the person so involved would be quite the opposite of the protection it provided."

As to the necklace itself and where it came from, my merchant marine friend told me that when he was around my age (i.e., my age then, the first two years of high school) he had become driven, actually obsessed with the lost continents of Atlantis and Mu. As soon as he could he began traveling the world to find or substantiate both places. But, the more and more ancient places he visited and more and more educated he became the more and more he became convinced neither place ever existed. In his quest, both pro and con, besides all the Atlantis and Mu books in his library, he had collected reams and reams of books, material, research and explanations that debunked nearly every single aspect of either continent or their civilizations that anybody could ever pose.

So said, even though I heard him say many times that he had long since lost faith in the existence of either of the lost continents, through inference he often related the origin of the necklace back to one or the other or both. However, the grounding source for the origin of the necklace usually falls back to Mt. Meru, and any colonies thereof such as Gyanganj, AKA Shambhala or Shangri-La.